Ron,
Editing the map itself is a good way to go, in general. Being able to see the spatial lay out of the roads and features is valuable, especially when editing attributes of a few segments. It's good to see the relationship to adjacent segments (for example to be sure the right segs are attributed with turn restrictions, or road class, etc. and that they connect correctly to other segs). This is how the typical data improvement edits are made when, for example, a user reports an error in map data. Map data providers TeleAtlas and NAVTEQ have an interactive map window for feedback on their web sites that let users accurately locate defect reports (of course the edit request is validated before going to the database).
It's also a benefit to be able to update via tables of data. You may have to update the speed limit of all roads in an industrial area or park polygon, for example, or the vehicle height/weight limit on all the bridges in a county. A table that specifies the update attributes relevant for many specified segment IDs is a lot more efficient than manually calling up each segment in the map editor. This sort of batch update should be followed by manual QA using the map editor and a statistcally sound sampling inspection.
I hope this helps,
Karl
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